Spirit Fitness Brand Review – Decent mid-range company

Spirit Fitness has been one of the little-known companies in the fitness industry for over 20 years now (Spirit entered the fitness industry in 1986 but the company itself almost 30 years old). Not only have they produced their own equipment but they’ve also produced equipment for a number of other fitness companies as well — Smooth, SportsArt and Sole being the the most prominant that pop in to my head.

In 2005 Spirit was purchased by a Taiwanese company called Dyaco International, one of the larger fitness manufacturers in the industry. Unfortunately, Dyaco also has a Chinese manufacturing plant which a lot of the lower end Spirit and Sole products come out of. As those of us in the industry know, Chinese manufacturing is much lower quality than that of the Taiwanese and this lower quality has affected a number of products by units produced by Dyaco for Spirit and Sole. The reduced quality control has led to the recall of one unit (the Spirit XE125) and major problems with a second one (the Spirit Z88).

Spirit remains one of the lesser known brands but is gaining ground due to sites like this one, which extolls the quality of the majority of their products.

This year, Spirit has done a very smart thing by repainting and re-releasing the older model Sole ellipticals and treadmills. In order to keep them from the stigma of the current Spirit X Series equipment, which has been plagued with problems and customer complaints, they have released the fantastic older Sole models under the Esprit brand. This is an excellent decision and the Esprit models have been some very solid new/old ellipticals and treadmills launched this year.